Exhibition highlights recent acquisitions and celebrated works by women artists from Tampa Bay and around the world
TAMPA, Fla. — The Tampa Museum of Art presents Avant Garde: Remarkable Women in the Permanent Collection, an exhibition celebrating the growing presence and impact of women artists in the Museum’s holdings. On view from February 26, 2026, through April 4, 2027, the exhibition features recent acquisitions and collection favorites that explore themes of home, self, history, creativity, and womanhood through figuration and abstraction.
As the Tampa Museum of Art’s permanent collection continues to grow, recent acquisitions have expanded the Museum’s representation of women artists with strong regional, national, and international significance.
“Avant Garde reflects the momentum of the Tampa Museum of Art’s growing permanent collection and the extraordinary women artists whose work is shaping the future of this Museum,” said Michael Tomor, Ph.D., Penny and Jeff Vinik Executive Director of the Tampa Museum of Art. “With each acquisition, we continue to ask whose stories we are telling and whose voices we are elevating. This exhibition offers a powerful answer.”
Organized thematically, Avant Garde invites visitors to experience the many ways artists have explored identity, place, memory, artistic influence, and imagination. In Our Bodies, Ourselves, artists consider how women see themselves and how others see them, offering works that express strength, joy, vulnerability, and resistance. Florida! focuses on the landscapes, natural beauty, and everyday life of the region, while also reminding viewers of the fragile environments that shape life in the state.
In Abstraction and Gesture, artists use color, shape, movement, and form to evoke emotion, memory, and imagination. Artist to Artist highlights the ways artists respond to art history and to one another, reimagining earlier styles and traditions through new perspectives. The section Home considers home as a place of comfort, responsibility, history, and personal experience, while Mythologies draws from stories, cultural traditions, memory, and imagination to explore belonging and identity.
Together, the works in Avant Garde demonstrate the courage, experimentation, and creative vision of artists who have challenged conventions and expanded the possibilities of contemporary art. The exhibition also reflects the Museum’s continued commitment to collecting, supporting, and sharing the work of women artists from many backgrounds and experiences.
Featured artists include Wendy Babcox, Hannah van Bart, Akea Brionne, Elisabeth Condon, Jane Corrigan, Elena del Rivero, Janet Echelman, Carole Feuerman, Lorraine Genovar, Kirsten Hassenfeld, Quisqueya Henríquez, Nneka Jones, Angela Kullman, Mernet Larsen, Tao Lewis, Marcia Marcus, Carol Mickett, Ya La’Ford, Claudia Ryan, Kelly Rysavy, Selina Román, Alma Thomas, Francine Tint, Niki de Saint Phalle, Jane Wilson, Marisol, Mika Rottenberg, and Carol Mickett and Robert Stackhouse.
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